Matt Patrick: Congressman, I’ve got you in the lead by 57 percent on my poll KTHR.com on the Matt Patrick blog. Fox’s got you winning this thing last night. You feel good about what took place last night?

Ron Paul: Yeah, I certainly do. Because it seems like we have steady growth in the campaign. And, of course, steady increase in the interest in the things I’ve been talking about for years. And it’s been growing this way for years. But certainly in the last several weeks dealing with the straw-vote I think it’s getting better all the time for us. So, we’re optimistic but we’re not making any wild predictions.

Matt Patrick: Congressman, obviously last night there was a lot of back and forth between you and Santorum about Iran. And I just want to take you back a little bit. If I can just kind of paraphrase – and correct me if I get any of this wrong – it appeared to me, it sounded to me, as it did to Santorum, that you are okay with Iran’s nuclear program and you are – I guess you were suggesting that we should just basically leave them alone and let them develop nuclear weapons if they want to do that. Did I get that wrong?

Ron Paul: The first half is a little bit different than what I really believe. I’m not okay with hardly anybody having nuclear weapons. Because I think they’re so useless and dangerous and all these things. I’m not okay with Pakistan having them or India having them, Israel having them. And we have too many. So, no, I’m not okay with it. But what I’m not okay with is that it’s reason to go to war. This is what Santorum’s arguing. That bill he talked about when he was in the Senate is actually a declaration of war for a regime change. And that’s what I oppose. And then I pointed out that there was the same type of talk about the fear mongering, how Iraq was going to attack us. Iranians can’t attack us. They don’t even have an air force. They don’t even have intercontinental ballistic missiles. And our own CIA say they’re not very far along. They may be wanting to but they are a long way off from a bomb. To decide that we have to go in there and do something about it, that’s what they want to do. And we’re already bombing – it’s hard to keep up with how many countries we’re bombing. It’s five or six now. To start another war just makes no sense whatsoever, especially since we’re broke. And I also made the point that we stood down the Soviets and they had thirty thousand of these. And this country doesn’t even have one. And the other point is they’re so third world, they can’t even make enough gasoline for themselves. And they have all this oil. And we’re supposed to be intimidated by them? We just don’t need another war.

Matt Patrick: We are joined this morning and I love talking with you, Congressman. Congressman Ron Paul. Dr. Paul, presidential candidate Paul. A man of many faces. Last night you got a lot of applause when you said one particular thing and I’m going to come back and I’m going to ask you about what you meant and why you think you got so much applause last night for this statement. And, last night, Congressman, you spoke about bringing our troops home. And this was very interesting. You said we’re going to bring them home, or you’d like to bring them home from Afghanistan, from Iraq, from all of the wars that you suggested that we’re either fighting officially or unofficially. And you got tremendous applause for this. Is that something that you think this country can do without serious ramifications?

Ron Paul: The serious ramifications come by us staying because it is bankrupting our country. The wars are undeclared. They’re not making us safer. It’s a fallacy to believe that we’re there to protect our freedoms because the war atmosphere actually undermines our freedom. Because they pass things like the Patriot Act that intrudes on our freedoms. So, no, we cannot sustain it, either because – and there’s our national defense and it’s just spending these trillions of dollars. And the people’s attitudes have changed. Four years ago, I would not have got that type of applause for that. Now it is. The people know it. And this is also the reason why the large majority of the American people now are very upset about what Obama’s doing in Libya. I cannot believe if they understood exactly what’s going on with Iran – they will not be very anxious to start a war with Iran either.

Matt Patrick: Congressman, one final question here. You are number one in my poll, on my website ktrh.com. You’re number one as far as the people think that you won this thing last night on Fox’s poll. You’ve run for president before. You’ve never had a huge showing. You’re running again. You win all these polls but you never seem to do well when it comes to election time. Does this bother you? I mean, does it ever depress you?

Ron Paul: No, not really because I’m always surprised on the upside. Four years ago, my expectations were not super great and I thought we did better than I ever dreamed of. We walked away from there with a huge organization of young people and supporters. And they’re motivated and they stayed organized over the last four years. This campaign is many times further along than the last campaign four years ago. So people now – we even have people like Newt Gingrich talking about all these things I said. We have the loud applauses for bringing the troops home. So, we’re winning our arguments. And I’m convinced it’s more than politics. You have to change people’s attitudes and minds and understanding. So, it’s an overwhelming task for what I’m doing, in the sense that trying to change and reverse fifty, sixty, seventy years of bad economic policy and a bad foreign policy which has been with us for a hundred years. So, the progress we’re making, I personally am very pleased.

Matt Patrick: Congressman, I thank you for your time. Congratulations on a great showing last night. And I look forward to talking with you again as you continue your presidential campaign. Congressman, Dr. Ron Paul joining us here this morning on Houston’s Morning News.

Ron Paul makes so much sense. Im glad I found him cause if not Id still be a sleep in the hawkish part of the right(bush repbs). Got more into poltics after 9/11 so it didnt help my world views well. But Ron has a different way of looking at other nations and dealings with them. Ive been saying why do we not trade with Cuba didnt make sense to me so long after the coldwar has been over. Look at some of the other nations we deal with why cant we deal with Cuba? Ron Pauls the 1st person I heardsay

Fox is a joke. Ron Paul destroyed the other candidates in the fox poll but they didn't show the true results. They showed Romney in the lead with Ron being last. Anyone who voted in the poll knows better. The main stream media is our enemy. They should be brought down.

If I was American, and I HAD to vote - I would vote for this guy. But I really dont think there is much he can do. The world is run by people a trillion times more powerful than this guy or any American president will ever be. Still - no harm putting up a fight. Good luck Ron Paul.

If I was American, and I HAD to vote - I would vote for this guy. But I really dont think there is much he can do. The world is run by people a trillion times more powerful than this guy or any American president will ever be. Still - no harm putting up a fight. Good luck Ron Paul.

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